A new political party aiming to represent the middle class and vowing to become Hong Kong's ruling force made its debut appearance yesterday.

Declaring that young professionals formed its backbone, the People's Party said the time of silence was over for the middle class given the political bickering and sensational sloganeering that have cast a shadow across society in the past few years.

Party Secretary-General Lo Chung-hing said disputes over political development were polarizing the community to a large extent. As members of the middle class who account for a majority of the population, the new party members found a number of the political figures on the scene less than trustworthy.

"In the past, we remained silent in the hope that the situation would be stable. In the face of the political and economic dynamics, we have no choice but to break our silence. We must stand up and form our own political organization, the People's Party," Lo declared at a press conference.

"We are transforming our discontent and grievances into the organization to get united in the long-term interest of our own," he said.

Lo said they were in support of the "One Country, Two Systems" arrangement under which authority of the SAR government stemmed from the central government as well as a high degree of autonomy for Hong Kong within the framework of the Basic Law.

He said the party already had seen its membership increase to more than 1,000 within a few months.

Party spokesman Samuel Yang said their members were mostly young professionals aged 20 to 40, including bankers, lawyers, environmentalists, doctors, dentists, educationalists, insurance underwriters, of whom a number were also district councillors.

"Our ultimate objective is to make Hong Kong a place where we can live and work in peace," Yang said.

He said that though the party was still too young to contest in the coming chief executive election in July, opportunities would be ample for members to rise to challenges in future elections.

"As a political party, we aim at becoming the ruling party," Yang said. "It is a mistake to think we are only a lobbying group or a political forum."

Lo said the party had deliberately deferred the election of a chairman. "Our consensus is that we should let members develop themselves first and the chance is fair for everyone to prove himself to have the calibre to become a leader," he said.

He said the party has set up an eight-member central standing committee. Aside from Lo and Yang, others include National People's Congress (NPC) deputy Kan Fook-yee; former Director of Civil Aviation, Lok Kung-nam; Associate Dean of City University's School of Law, Priscilla Leung; environmentalist Wan Shek-lun; Ding Pengyun and Yao Zheng.

Yang rejected criticism that the party did not have a popular base, saying their political views were shared by the vast majority as was evident in the pace of membership enrolment.

(China Daily HK Edition March 18, 2005)